Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - fear of 666. Wikipedia reports: "A prominent example is Nancy and Ronald Reagan who, in 1979, when moving to their home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, had its address—666 St. Cloud Road—changed to 668 St. Cloud Road."

Monday, 17 December 2012

As many students are struggling with their forthcoming Unseen Appreciation (poetry) exams, I've collected from the web a quick guide to some of the key elements of sound appreciation in poetry.

It's very easy for students to learn the key critical terms and it is fun to begin to apply them. I'd also recommend using them! Why not ask your children/students to compose short alliterative poems? Even nonsense poems?

Poetry should be fun, after all, and creativity is the high road to brilliant critical insight...Sibilance is a
manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing
a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are
held close together; a consonant that uses sibilance may be called a sibilant.
Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words
sip, zip, ship, chip, and Jeep, and the second consonant in vision.

In language, alliteration
is the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed
syllables) of a series of words or phrases.

Consonance is a poetic device characterized by the
repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in
"pitter patter" or in "all mammals
named Sam are clammy".

Assonance is the
repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or
sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance[1] serves as one of
the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like
blue?", the /uː/
("o"/"ou"/"ue" sound) is repeated within the
sentence

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Many of my students are interested in gender, women's writing and feminist criticism. I have recently made available a short introduction to this topic.

I have also started to assemble a list of some useful and thought-provoking comments together with some historic quotations.

Reflect and Enjoy! The last quotation on this page of the blog references Cleopatra...

"one is not born, but rather becomes a woman."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

"Historically social inequality between men and women can be traced to
unequal power relations in particular societies [...] But it can also be traced
- possibly relatedly - to systems of representation: how women are represented
in plays, rituals, photographic images, novels, films, etc." Alan Durant
and Nigel Fabb, Literary Studies in Action (1990), p. 43.

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a
woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very
remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost
novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some
Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about
the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I
would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them,
was often a woman.”

-Virginia Woolf, A
Room of One's Own

"Feminist criticism cannot be traced to origins in the
work of one or more individuals working in a particular period or
discipline at a particular time. Rather, it grows out of the historical
experience of resistance and self-definition by women in circumstances of
social control by men; it is the gradual definition of a critical
field..."

"[Gender] is a compulsory performance in the same sense that acting out of line with heterosexual norms brings with it ostracism, punishment, and violence, not to mention the transgressive pleasures produced by those very prohibitions."
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)

“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”

-
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“I
am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent
will.”- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"The human species has a biologically fixed, binary sex
division between male and female. But superimposed on this are culturally
constructed oppositions of gender: masculine and feminine, men and women, etc.
It is this system of oppositions which the various strands of feminist
criticism analyse and seek to change." Alan Durant and Nigel Fabb, Literary
Studies in Action (1990), p. 43.

“A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself. ”
- Simone de Beauvoir

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative
sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women
represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of
mind over morals.”

- Oscar Wilde, The
Picture of Dorian Gray

“When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved
me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values”

- Simone de Beauvoir, The
Woman Destroyed

“I
hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of
rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
- Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I
am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be
myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of
me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do
not at all anticipate.”

- Charlotte
Brontë, Jane Eyre

"the restrictive gender categories of the nineteenth century imposed on female writers are reflected in the metaphors of anger and madness in their heroines." Doris Bremm, summarising The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me,
merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world
than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your
time and experience.”

- Charlotte Brontë, Jane
Eyre

"One crucial factor in the social construction of
femininity is the way literary values and conventions have themselves been
shaped by men, and women have often struggled to express their own concerns in
what may well have been inappropriate forms." Raman Selden and Peter
Widdowson, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (1993), p. 215.

“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with
its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made
clean, over and over, day after day.”
- Simone de Beauvoir

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel
just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their
efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint,
too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is
narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought
to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on
the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at
them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced
necessary for their sex."

- Charlotte Brontë, Jane
Eyre

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses
possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at
twice its natural size.”

- Virginia Woolf, A Room
of One's Own

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her
weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself,
not to abase herself but to assert herself--on that day love will
become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.”
- Simone de Beauvoir

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his
poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this
by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding,
or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with
his pen.”

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like
rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing
them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman

“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a
little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion
about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them,
both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half
angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.” - Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

"Patriarchy subordinates the female to the male or
treats the female as an inferior male, and this power is exerted, directly or
indirectly, in civil and domestic life to constrain women. Despite deomcratic
advances, women have continued to be coerced by a system of sex-role
stereotyping to which they are subjected from the earliest age." Raman
Selden and Peter Widdowson, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory
(1993), p. 214.

“Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because
they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.”

- Simone de Beauvoir, The
Woman Destroyed

“Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job
does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of
theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I
admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A
man does not, as a rule, have to choose. He gets both. Nevertheless, there have
been women ... who had the choice, and chose the job and made a success of it.
And there have been and are many men who have sacrificed their careers for
women ... When it comes to a choice, then every man or woman has to choose as
an individual human being, and, like a human being, take the consequences.”

- Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human?

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project”
- Simone de Beauvoir

“And "laids," [=ugly] indeed, they were; being a
set of four, denominated in the catalogue "La vie d'une femme." They
were painted rather in a remarkable style—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The
first represented a "Jeune Fille," coming out of a church-door, a
missal in her hand, her dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed
up—the image of a most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a
"Mariée," with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her
chamber, holding her hands plastered together, finger to finger, and showing
the whites of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, a "Jeune
Mère," hanging disconsolate over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like
an unwholesome full moon. The fourth, a "Veuve," being a black woman,
holding by the hand a black little girl, and the twain studiously surveying an
elegant French monument, set up in a corner of some Père la Chaise. All these
four "Anges" were grim and grey as burglars, and cold and vapid as
ghosts. What women to live with! insincere, ill-humoured, bloodless, brainless
nonentities! As bad in their way as the indolent gipsy-giantess, the Cleopatra,
in hers.”

Light and Shadow: What will happen to books and reading in the Age of Kindle?

Encounter

I had the opportunity to make use of a
friend’s Kindle a fortnight ago.

Resistance

Dear Reader, you may be shocked at my
tardiness in coming to the most fashionable gadget in recent years.
Indeed, in 2010, I fought off several offers of Kindle Christmas
presents from the many friends and family who know very well my
addiction to reading books.

Temptation

I was aware of the vast library of free
books and that was a temptation: having them in my pocket, rather than
stuck on the hard drive, or only available with internet access. What
struck me was the sleek design of the Kindle, its comfortable lightness
and ease of use; but most impressive its screen technology, unglaring
and flicker-free.

Overcrowding

As my large Victorian terrace house will
not accommodate more purchases of books it makes sense to switch at
least some of my purchases to electronic copies for certain kinds of
work. But I still have reservation and feel that the potential for
ebooks is still in its infancy. But I do see astonishing positive
opportunities, and fewer but nonetheless noteworthy negatives.

Predictions

As I gaze into the future I am the first to
admit that I have never been very good at prediction. I could not see
why anyone would want to queue outside a bank, in the rain, just to gain
access to your cash, when you could wait inside, speak to a cashier,
and have your money handed to you in person. But self-service is now
king in the World of Selves.

Sloppy publishing?

Let me say now that I don’t feel that
Kindles and other ebooks will kill of traditional paper and hardbacks.
There will still be a market for well-crafted books where the quality of
the form matches the brilliance of the content. I would also admit here
that many of my recent ‘hardback’ purchases have been poor examples of
contemporary publishing: sloppy editing and layout, loose pages, poor
paper, lack of illustrations, footnotes, an index, a bibliography …

Opportunities

Considering that production and delivery
costs are negligible I see no reason why supporting material and
resources, including colour illustration, cannot become an expected
component of non-fiction ebooks. Here then is an opportunity for
improved quality of content, and more of it.

A fair trade deal for writers

Epublishing and self-publishing also
provide opportunities to reduce the role of parasitic intermediaries
such as the publisher and shop. It has long been a topic of lamentation
amongst writers of worthy but unpopular books that the author is paid a
pittance for years of conscientious research, reflection and
composition. In contrast to the shop prices, many writers are no better
off than the coffee bean grower, paid a few cents from your $4
cappuccino. Surely it’s now time for a fair trade deal for authors too.

Nostalgia

Nonetheless, I don’t predict that instantly
available, cheaper and more dynamic ebooks will replace their
traditional ancestors. There is uniqueness about the book as commodity
and artefact which the Kindle clone world cannot utterly displace or
diminish. There will also be nostalgia for the traditional product. And
an appreciation of the art and craft element in book as object.
Similarly Tape and CD looks cramped and uniform compared to the opulent
canvas of Vinyl Records. And there will be purists who prefer the
‘warmth’ and glitchy individuality of the analogue to the bland
reproducibility digital product.

Opportunities

But ebooks present a range of further
opportunities for reading and writing that the traditional forms could
not and will not offer.

First, we will see the development of
enhanced reading, in which the text is not merely supplemented by, but
integrated with other multi-media. If I am reading an ebook on the History of Rap, one
click will allow me to place the examples featured in the book.
Similarly colour illustration and video clips also become an affordable
option for content, citation, and diversity of approach.

Second, improved opportunities for
annotation are attractive for the many non-fiction readers who are
studying or researching. Again the transition is toward a more active
reading process. Of course I can still underline and comment in the
margins of my paper copy, but the ease of use for multi-coloured
highlighting, commenting, searching certainly facilitates the usability
of the text. Add to that the possibility of communal annotation and we
have further avenues for creative collaboration which would be a crime
against the crisp clarity of the shared library book.

My third observation is that we will see
publishers offering discounts to groups of readers who have formed into
clubs because they enjoy the shared experience of reading, comment and
criticizing texts. For those with minority interest, this affords
opportunities for informed discussion across vast distances, and on a
global scale. Note how the empowering effects of the technology present
opportunities for a shift in human consciousness.

A further development of the third
observation would be the book that can evolve through individual or
collective participation. We are familiar with books having different
editions, but these have become uneconomic for all but the most popular
or scientific non-fiction. The ebook becomes a living organism rather
than a stable and fixed cultural artefact.

A fifth observation, more radical, and
perhaps a little disturbing, takes the openness a stage further and
provides books with different openings, middles, or endings. Or
characters and locations that readers can alter and transform. The book
perhaps comprises flexible and shifting modules, components, and
floating memes, susceptible to addition, deletion, or transformation.
Books that reform and deform. Texts become deconstructing games, and the
balance of creative effort shifts from ‘writer’ to ‘reader.’ What’s
disturbing in this case is the demise of our long cherished notions of
property, authorship and ownership, guaranteed by the commodity form of
the book as a fixed and stable created object. What’s more disturbing,
perhaps, is the need to recognize that the period of romantic
authorship, which we may be on the verge of abandoning, persisted for
less than three centuries in the history of human writing and thinking
systems.

A sixth observation proposed an experience
even further away from the notion of reader, writer and book as a
one-to-one experience. As texts become a form of enriched and enhanced
reality, a transition is made to animation and game technologies; to
infinitely increased levels of interactivity and engagement. Perhaps the
student textbook will prevent access to the next level, until questions
have been answered correctly. Books that police our journeys through
them and a corporate dream of remote learning beyond physical
institutions.

Gray

And lurking behind the collective
participation is the machine tracking our preferences and choices.
Reading interrupted by pop-up ads designed to capitalize and monetize
our tastes and preferences. Othello becomes a weekend trip to Venice, The Odyssey
a Greek holiday opportunity. In this scenario ebooks and maybe even the
readers are offered to us for ‘free’ but are colonized by tracking,
tagging and selling; a minor sacrifice and self-willed infringement of
the safe and private experience of reading that is now no more than a
shadowy nostalgia for a lost time, a lost place.

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Has the noisy modern world drowned out our ear for poetry? I suspect not. While it may be true that contemporary society both fears and yearns for silence, it is also clear to me that performance poetry, poetry slams, and many other street manifestations such as that of griots and rapping, are alive and well.

While traditional poetry presents a variety of obstacles to the modern reader, we should not forget the appeal of the ear that chimes so well with popular contemporary consciousness, and indeed constitutes a significant public domain for the exchange of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. These sentiments are leading me to reconsider one of our greatest but most neglected poets: Dryden.

In the Preface to the 1945 edition of his book John Dryden: A Study of his Poetry, Mark van Doren wrote

"We have cults of sensibility and sincerity; we are
marvellously responsive to ambiguities; we know how to plot the oblique course,
to surprise words into revealing three senses when there was none before; we can
find politics in metaphor, morality in syntax, and myth in minor parts of
speech. But we do not act as if we had ears. Ears are not everything, but the
absence of them leaves poetry dangerously dead.

Dryden had a great ear. He
attended to the craft of sound, and not vulgarly as Poe and Swinburne did, but
with a man's interest in the muscle, the sinew, and the nerve of a poem that
must be both heard and understood as saying something. He liked to say things,
and in time perfected a verse instrument that could say for him anything he was
capable of thinking or feeling. Poetry itself was an instrument upon which he
spoke and played. The rhythmical organization of a poem got as much of his
attention as the plausibility of its statement."

[T. S. Eliot's Selected Essays (p. 306) referred to Mark van
Doren's The Poetry of Dryden, 1920, which was based on his Columbia Uni
PhD]

I'm assuming that the 'masculinity' that Pope and many
others associated with Dryden was associated with the public role of the
satirist and dramatist? How would you reconsider that category
from a 21st century perspective?

If you are an English poetry scholar, let me say that I'm looking for any recommended polemical works
published since the 1970s that provide idiosyncratic discussions
of the critical relationship between John Dryden and T.S. Eliot.Ideally,
I'm also seeking out any writings that are able to move from notions of
'difficulty' to 'accessibility' and perhaps open up these poets, and the
enduring relevance or value of their prose works, to new
readers.

Beyond the familiar - and much derided - emphasis on the
'exploded' notion of 'dissociation of sensibility' and 'reputation and
traditions' school, I'm also interested in coming across studies by poets
(perhaps working outside academia?), who have responded to the idea of finding a
public voice, and to 'finding an ear' for poetry.

Can anyone help?

I think that this is quite a promising topic in terms of inclusivity, and hope to publish some more blogs on poetry as sound, and orality, in the near future.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Because there are now millions of free blogs we have the opportunity
to dip into lots of different kinds of writing and to sample quite different
approaches to recurring topics or themes. Doing this kind of reading randomly
can have wonderful results. It's called serendipity which involves surprise
discoveries and unexpected connections.

Serendipity is, of course, an eighteenth century word (1754). While
we may consider that the period of the Enlightenment was obsessed with reason, system,
order and process, the variety of different kinds of topical, fictional and
journalistic writing offered many opportunities for fluid expression by
creative people and mercurial personalities.

Serendipity is also a useful strategy for broadening your
interests and for avoiding the so-called writer's block.

I believe that all great writers are also intelligent
critical readers. I despair when I hear people saying that they want to write,
but then proceed to say that they are not interested in other people's work. Sometimes
it's a good idea to imitate or parody writers that you like or dislike.
(Imitation is not the same as copying.)

Part of writing is a craft, and it's good to learn the rules
before you start to break them creatively. There are plenty of style and grammar
manuals on the market.

In order to establish your own voice and style it’s
essential to compose regularly. It is also correct to say, in my view, that improvements
come slowly over a period of time. In the art of writing there are few miracles
that manifest themselves overnight. And genius is 90% effort and training. Learning
to write fluently and effectively can be as difficult as learning to play an
instrument such as the piano, violin, or guitar,

It is crucial to be self-critical, but you should avoid
becoming self-destructive. Think about how you would the improve blogs that you
wrote 6 months ago. Reviewing past material should also build your confidence
by giving you a sense of progression.

Also, ask yourself how you are responding to an issue, and
think about the kind of reader that you have in mind - this is also something
that you can research. These days, writers tend to know who they are writing
for.

I would also say that blogging is a genre in itself. This
means that you will need to write differently when you turn your blogs into a
larger article, essay, or book. Typically, the most popular blogs are very
personal, or they offer lots of tips in bullet points. That said, there are
REALLY no fixed rules or expectations for this genre. My own blogs have a
variety of styles, and I see them sometimes as experiments, and as
work-in-progress.

Another positive aspect of blogging is that you can break a larger
project down into smaller components, or event fragments that do not fit
together as you compose them. After a period of time you start to see links
between the pieces, and new patterns of significance are established.

Finally, one of the most valued aspects of blogging is the
opportunity for dialogue and what we have come to term interactivity.

In our time, writing is a bit more collaborative and a
little less solitary.

Quote from Wiki:

"Although not a must, most good quality blogs are
interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other
via GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes
them from other static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form
of social networking. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on
their blogs but also build social relations with their readers and other
bloggers."

Monday, 8 October 2012

The second part of my exploration of rudeness in Shakespeare couples Sonnet 135 with a discussion of his work written by Dr Samuel Johnson in 1765

In this poem 'Will' is punned in a variety of senses: (1) willpower; (2) Will Shakespeare; (3) a bequest; (4) the penis; (5) future/s. Sense (4) is the one that you are least likely to encounter in discussions that want to shield readers from the reality of the eroticised encounter with the male genitalia.

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I, that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

(As Michel Foucault pointed out, the erotic "gaze" resulted in "perpetual spirals of power and
pleasure"...)

In Johnson's discussion below, Shapespeare's tendency to pun (or quibble) is presented in sexualised terms as a undesirable temptation and procreation of meaning. Johnson then proceeds to deconstruct further the risk of vulgarity and triviality. There is the sense of a downward motion (stooping/falling) beneath bardic dignity. But Johnson's preface also plays on the idea of bulky and swelling wit/will and seems to me to provide a scandalous reconstruction of the mine/treasure of erotic discovery and exploration. And so at every turn the witty willpower hints at a risky grotesque quality that offends decency.

Preface to Shakespeare

Samuel Johnson (1765)

It is incident to him to be now and then
entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will
not reject; he struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn,
comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and
evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.

Not that always where the language is
intricate the thought is subtle, or the image always great where the line is
bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial
sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are
recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures.

But the admirers of this great poet have
never less reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he
seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender
emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of
love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or
contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts
himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and
blasted by sudden frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous
vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to
lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some
malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever
be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging
knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with
incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before
him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which
he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A
quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content
to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was
to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose
it.

The work of a correct and regular writer is
a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and
scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks
extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with
weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses;
filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.
Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought
into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which
contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by
incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner
minerals.

It has been much disputed, whether
Shakespeare owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the
common helps of scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and
the examples of ancient authours.

There has always prevailed a tradition, that
Shakespeare wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill
in the dead languages. Jonson, his friend, affirms, that he had small Latin,
and no Greek; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood,
wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions of Shakespeare were known
to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless
some testimony of equal force could be opposed.

Some have imagined, that they have discovered
deep learning in many imitations of old writers; but the examples which I have
known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such easy
coincidences of thought, as will happen to all who consider the same subjects;
or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are
transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences.